Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Was the designer a distant relative of Howard Hughes?
What could a government build for itself if the voters didn’t get to vote. The U.S. govmint was guilty of throwing a lot of money at exotic aircraft designs in the ’40′s. The Spruce Goose was one of many (That was my first thought when I saw the CSM for the first time.) Quite a number of limited run planes. One of my favorites: The redoubtable “Flying Flapjack”.
That’s funny, pdxjim. IIRC, the old Spruce Goose actually flew at a higher altitude on it’s one-and-only demo flt than the did the Russki sea-skimmer during normal flight ops as the “monster” was strictly a surface effect transport. Don’t know how truly utilitarian it was, but it sure holds the rust well…
The Russian name for it was Lun, which means “Hen Harrier”. I am not sure Chicken Botherer is a real good name for a military vehicle.
A harrier is a hawk — so a hen harrier is a chickenhawk.
You’re right. *Not* an auspicious name…
I thought they were falcons, but I admittedly know next to nothing about birds.
Actually, the armament was six SS-N-22 Sunburns. The design bureau was the same that did a lot of Soviet hydrofoils – and the naval architecture tended to carry over whether or not it was applicable.
Ground effect is very, very tricky. Because you can use it to kill induced drag, and get substantial increases in performance. I’ve heard pilot reports from aircrew of Vulcan bombers – they would set up for 300 kts at 1,000 ft, go to ~30 feet…and the airplane would accelerate to ~400 kts.
The Navy was seriously considering doing a test program on a Russian WIG in the early 1990s.
That’s what (among other things) made the RN Blackburn Buccaneer such an effective naval anti-shipping strike ac, MikeM. With an internal bomb bay, slick at sea level and with the gnd effect, it was faster than just about anything around in the same profile carrying external stores–faster on the deck than the Toranados which replaced it. (I always did think it was a mistake to prematurely retire that ac)
Looks like a Korrosion Kontrol nightmare waiting to happen.
The zinc panels were pretty well rotted out, weren’t they?
Putting the links into Google Translator really bring out the details.
When but a young lad (or so it seems) every Intel weeny worth his or her salt would fill us with terror tales of the dreaded Caspian Sea monsters
ah, $%^&, hit the wrong button and can’t take it back! Anyway, we were told the CSM’s were so good at skimming the world’s oceans, and so fraught with evil intent, and speed, and stealth, and loaded for every CVBG and SAG afloat that we’d all be blown to kingdom come. This dragged on for years. Until one day, getting the umpteenth CSM brief somebody raised their hand from the back of the ready room (from whence all common sense emanates, anyway) and asked “if they’ve been working on these things for 15 years and they’re so good, how come nobody else is doing it and they’re all still in the Caspian Sea?” Deer-in-the-headlights doesn’t even begin to describe the look on the hapless AI’s face…
Later on I got to know one of Langley’s CSM experts and asked him the same question. All he would say was “ah, the devil was in the details, my son, the devil was in the details.”
As was said by Leon Trotsky in 1905 as the Communist Party split in two to the departing Mensheviks as they stormed out of the Second Congress of Soviets: “Go, go into the dustbin of history!” Or, as SNO says, “another piece from the rummage sale of Soviet history.”
“Voices from the back of the room” bit reminds me of the story (true) about a lecture at Columbia U. in which some world-renown (supposedly) blowhard of an etymologist/linguist was exclaiming that he had studied every language on earth, and that while there were some languages in which a yes meant no, others the reverse, and some in which a double-negative meant a positive, there were ABSOLUTELY no languages on earth in which a double positive meant a negative. And from the back of the room a voice wafted out: “Yeah, yeah..” LOL.
Those interior photos look like something from a 1950′s sci-fi movie. The interior of a Space Patrol vessel, perhaps.
The dashboard is a rather pretty color, though, very 1960′s blue. I was born in 1961, and I had a desk chair that color when I was in 5th grade. Some of the words on the buttons almost seem readable. I see one that seems to say auto trim.
StB:
That’s pretty much the standard Soviet/Russian cockpit color – as seen here (Su-35).
- SJS
They use blue, where we use gray?
Yup — better contrast with the instruments and switches.
That’s important when your ride gets so bumpy you can’t *read* what’s on the switch…
Does anybody have a comment about this movie, that was “related” to the CSM at youtube?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP5HM-aaNUE
I’ll bet the devil was in the details for this one as well.
Aero-engineers on a vodka binge – NOT good. The only positive is that you weren’t very far from terra firma (or terra wetta) when things went wrong. The interesting part is the surrounding city-scape. Everything just looks so decayed, unkempt, rotting.
Dead end maybe, but an interesting idea. Think extremely fast frigate, not aircraft. I suspect the devil in the details was trying to operate in ground effect in any kind of sea state. If I recall correctly that’s why the never left the Caspian.
Is the “chinese variant of” the right link?
It was a Chinese variant of the SS-N-2 used by the Iraqis that Lex bombed.
Which was a very good day. For me, anyway.
You get a lot of job satisfaction out of secondaries.
I said thanks then, and still mean it. The removal of that annoyance literally changed the way we worked “up there” after it was gone.
Good recce Lex – your link is really interesting when pasted into google translator – according to the author:
“The ship was armed with three pairs of cruise missile 3M80 or 80M “Mosquito” (the NATO designation SS-N-22 Sunburn).”
I saw of lot of images of these things back in the 70′s, and our intel guys were all over them. People forget that these were also being designed as transports for Soviet Naval Infantry so as to get in fast, off load, and get out faster.
There were any number of European coastal areas that these would be useful for getting troops into in a hurry, and causing all sorts of reaction problems for NATO and local defenses.
I have a 1/700 scale model of an Ekronoplan, and it takes up almost as much shelf space as a 1/700 scale JOHN C BUTLER class DE. Most of the space is the wings, but still, it’s a big flying machine.
I should imagine a AIM-7 from a NATO Phantom would have cancelled the mission, Tim.
Every time I see the interior of a Russian aircraft it makes me like zinc chromate even more.
Just watched the video, you are right about the sound track. Man, the Russians can out weird us any day of the week, can’t they?